Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Jet-lag and Blood Donation

A new Austrian research has come out with a study that, frequent flyers that undergo Jet-lag and people who work under Shift are prone to Heart diseases. According to them, it is because of the effects that it creates on the Red blood cells in our body. But this can be taken care of by simply donating blood and allowing the production of fresh young red blood cells.

This finding came about a research under the leadership of Dr. Margit Egg (University of Innsbruck), where they experimented on an organism called zebra fish, a model organism which, like humans, which is active during the day. This fish was made to be active on an alternate basis varying from 7 hours to 21 hours, which is similar to the shift work time patterns followed in an industry. Through this they found out that, the fish which were made active on shift basis showed higher numbers of aged red blood cells, which accumulated in the blood vessels. It is come to the understanding that, these aged blood cells get accumulated in our spleen and liver since they are less flexible. Normally, these aged blood cells are removed from the blood by itself, but the Jet-Lag has disrupted this process and researchers are yet to find out the reason why.

These aged blood cells are prone to create clots and direct us towards heart diseases like heart-attacks and other cardio-vascular diseases. It also reduces the oxygen carrying capacity in the blood. The best solution is to generate new blood cells in the human system and the best way to do this is by donating blood on a frequent basis. Studies are carried out to find out if Jet lag may affect our physiological processes as well.

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